Transgendered (Male) Athletes in Women Sports

While the 2026 World Cup was underway in North America, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling, which is to say, a judgment rationally argued, siding with member-states that did not permit “Y chromosome” students in public schools to play in on “XX chromosome” sports teams. Not being a writer who fecklessly evades controversial topics for fear of turning away some readers, I will attempt to tackle the jurisprudence and ethics of male athletes who self-identify as women playing in women sports such as American football in public schools.

The full essay is at "Transgendered (Male) Athletes in Women Sports."

Behind Political Culture: U.S. President Clinton’s Lying under Oath

The stature that comes with occupying (and even having occupied) public office, whether elected or appointed and especially if high office, combined with the ability to attract the attention of the media such that the (former) official’s statements have the credibility of pronouncements, and thus of being true rather than false statements, is rarely examined for what the stature and societal “mouth-piece” imply (i.e., veracity). A very high former elected representative who has even admitted lying under oath in a court proceeding back while in office can very easily be assumed decades later to be making a true statement by the public even though that statement is practically identical to the statement known (and admitted) to have been false. Even published photos that are strong evidence that the second statement is false can be dismissed by a public too liable to being beguiled by clever political birds of prey. I have in mind here the twin statements of Bill Clinton, who was the U.S. President for two terms in the 1990s and went on to associate with Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous head of the child-prostitute sex-ring, and at least one of his paid girls.

The full essay is at "Behind Political Culture."

Congressional Subpoenas: The Case of the Clintons

The rule of law is absolutely essential to a representative democracy being able to endure even as strong personalities in public office may seek to bend or even dismiss law for their own purposes. The notion that anyone subject to law gets a pass according to one’s own discretion and power is toxic to a republic being regarded as fair. Just as everyone has a right to due process in legal proceedings in the U.S., no one is above the law there. This applies to former presidents and secretaries of state, and thus to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Their written statement in refusing to recognize a Congressional subpoena as valid—a presumptuous stunt to be sure—reveals that they held the presumption of being able to decide whether a law to which they were subject was valid. This presumption could also be seen when Bill Clinton occupied the White House, for he deliberately lied under oath, “I did not have sexual relations with” Monika Lewinski even though she had performed oral sex with him in the Oval Office when she was a White House intern. My point is that the underlying pattern is clear with respect to a lack of regard for law itself (even though both Clintons went to Yale’s law school) and the presumption of setting oneself in the position of invalidating law to which one is subject. That Bill Clinton was no punished with incarceration in the 1990s was unfortunate even for him and his wife as they were not afforded the opportunity to learn a lesson.

The full essay is at "Congressional Subpoenas."

U.S. Presidential Encroachment on State Prerogatives

Both in the E.U. and U.S., the member-states are semi-sovereign, and are even guaranteed all residual sovereignty that is not in any of the enumerated competencies (i.e., powers) of the respective unions and the states. Europeans are smart to have multiple avenues for the state governments in the European Council and the Council of Ministers so those governments can protect themselves against encroachment by the Commission. To be sure, these safeguards go too far, especially given the sheer number of states even by the mid-2020s, in giving each state a veto especially on important matters in which qualified-majority voting does not apply. In other words, the safeguards against federal encroachment in the E.U. are excessive as long as each state can wield its veto against federal policies, legislation, and regulations. Regarding the latter, the directive means provides each state with some latitude. I suspect that the Europeans who constructed the E.U.’s federal system were in part fearful of federal encroachment because so much of that had already built-up in the U.S., where federal consolidation had become a threat to the governmental sovereignty of the member-states, as if they were just regions rather than republics holding even more sovereignty, on parchment at least, than does Congress and the federal president. So, it is worth taking not of the rare instances in which a state legislature pushes back against threats from the U.S. president on a competency (i.e., enumerated power) reserved by the states.  The rejection by the Indiana Senate of U.S. President Trump’s pressure to accept new districts for U.S. House representatives from Indiana—a map in which the Republican Group would likely pick up two seats—is important because Congressional-district maps are the prerogative of the states rather than an encroaching federal executive.

The full essay is at "U.S. Presidential Encroachment."

The UN in the US: Trump Bans Abbas

Should the UN’s General Assembly and Security Council be located in New York City? Both New York and the Union in which New York is a member-state have assumed the obligation of being proper hosts to people from around the world who come to the UN for its business. Even though that international organization has displayed an impotence in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli military incursion that has decimated Gaza and its residents, having an international forum in which talking can take place is not for naught. As an open speaking club of sorts, the United Nations permits adversaries and allies alike to make their views known to each other and the rest of the world. Even though the very existence of the vetoes in the Security Council styme action, that members of the UN so easily get away with violating resolutions renders the entire resolution-process de facto nugatory in real significance. So essentially, the UN building in New York City enables diplomats and heads of governments alike to speak out and with each other. It is vital, therefore, that the US take an expansive approach to issuing visa-waivers so institutional members of the UN can be as well represented as they desire to be. In this regard, the host—the United States Government—should refrain from applying its partisanship in international disputes by restricting the waivers to cover the bare essentials of personnel coming to the UN in New York from abroad.

The full essay is at "The UN in the US."

Wealth and Ethics in American Fiscal Policy

In a struggle between wealth and ethics, practically speaking the former tends overwhelmingly to win hands down, even if the form of government is at least nominally a representative democracy, but in fact an oligarchy or plutocracy. The influence of the moneyed interest both in the E.U. and U.S. is likely much stronger than most of the respective citizenries know. When the poorest of the poor are to be made worse off financially by cuts in certain government programs while defense contractor companies stand to get more, which tends to mean higher bonuses for executives (and campaign contributions for elected representatives), the skew toward the gilded and away from the most vulnerable economically can be viewed as an x-ray of sorts indicative of rule by wealth rather than by the People. U.S. President Trump’s fiscal budget enacted in 2025 is a case in point by which the questionable morality of the plutocracy or oligopoly form of government can be gleaned.

 

The full essay is at "Wealth and Ethics in American Fiscal Policy."

The Gaza Holocaust

I contend that the genocide in Gaza being committed by the Israeli government can also be termed a holocaust. This is actually not much of a leap; what is surprising is that American mercenaries—retired U.S. Army officers working as subcontractor security forces at food distribution sites in Gaza—have also enjoyed the sport of shooting adult and even children Gazans under the reasonable assumption of impunity. As the funder of the subcontractor, the U.S. Government can be considered as an accomplice even more directly than in merely supplying Israel with the weapons to use to kill off the population of Gaza. The sheer inertia of the American electorate and the intractability of the federal representatives can itself be viewed as a subtle accomplice in the ongoing atrocity of the Gaza Holocaust. Even in the E.U., the electorate and its federal representatives have been slow to adjust, as for instance E.U. President Von der Leyen made an excuse in July of 2025 not to end the trade agreement with Israel. With the U.S. so ethically compromised, the world wisely looked to the E.U. and even to China to step in and stop the holocaust, especially after an American who had witnessed the killing publicly described the horrendous role of both the Israelis and Americans providing “security” at the food-distribution sites.

The full essay is at "The Gaza Holocaust."

Passive Aggression on Campus: Redefining Hate-Speech

Besides using social pressure and anger to purge words that a student or faculty member deems unacceptable, the word police have found that they can get objectionable opinions criminalized. This runs 180 degrees from the sort of openness to different, even objectionable ideas that makes a college campus thrive with an academic rather than passive-aggressive atmosphere. Sometimes, getting the law to go against a pollical opinion that a fallible person deems to be intolerable can show just how dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary the criminalizing of ideas can be. Here I have in mind the case of Marianne Hirsh, a genocide scholar at Columbia University. It is a sign of going too far that political corrective would be weaponized with criminal punishments that such a scholar, whose parents had died in the Nazi Holocaust, would think that she would have to teach at another university to be able to continue teaching material from the notable twentieth-century scholar, Hannah Arendt, who wrote on the banality of evil in that Holocaust (and, were she still alive in the next century, would probably also write of the Gaza Holocaust in such terms). Behind political correctness is the arrogance and related intolerance that stem from the sin of self-idolatry: taking oneself to be omniscient and omnipotent (but not omnibenevolent).

The full essay is at "Passive Aggression on Campus."

The Israeli Military Kills Starving Gazans Seeking Food as Police in Massachusetts Intimidate Human-Rights Protesters

Even as the Israeli military was shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge, where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?) did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending weapons to Israel.  

The full essay is at "The Israeli Army Kills Starving Gazans."

The U.S. Supreme Court Clipping Judicial Overreach

The separation of powers that characterizes governments in the United States assumes that each branch will act to further its own interests, given the salience of self-interest (and self-preservation) in human nature. It is assumed that the checks and balances between legislative, judicial, and executive branches will keep any one branch from dominating the other two, and, moreover, the government itself from becoming tyrannical at the expense of the liberty of the citizenry. It is not assumed or relied upon that a branch will prune itself without external pressure from one of the other branches. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court may have done so in ruling on June 27, 2025 to limit “the ability of lower-court judges to block executive branch policies nationwide.”[1] I contend that any real wing-clipping by 6 of the 9 justices is illusory rather than indicative of the federal judiciary unilaterally restricting itself.

The full essay is at "The U.S. Supreme Court." 

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1. Abbie Vansickle, “Justices Put Limit on Judges’ Power, In Win for Trump,” The New York Times, June 28, 2025.

Is Healthcare a Human Right?

Humanity still has not come to a consensus on what are entailed specifically within the rubric of human rights. Even in terms of those specifics that have come to be generally held to be human rights, such as in designated war crimes and crimes against humanity by international agreement, the lack of de jure and de facto enforcement render such agreement nugatory in practice. As a result, calls for human rights are in effect calls for warring to stop. The enforcement that goes along with laws legislated by governments render any consensus on what constitutes human rights more substantive in practice. This is undercut, however, in empire-scale polities of polities, such as the E.U. and U.S., to the extent that human rights are carved out at the federal level to applied across differing cultures. Such ideological diversity between the American member-states has triggered drastically-different notions of just what are included as human rights to be played out in Congress. The debate over the government-financed health-insurance program for the poor in 2025 illustrates such a lack of consensus, which in turn suggests that the member-states should play more of a role in how or even whether to provide free insurance to the poor. Sometimes, one size doesn’t fit all. In short, the matter of federalism is very relevant up front, before matters of the proper role of government itself and of human rights are decided. In other words, the qualitative and quantitative differences between a union of states and a state are very relevant up front, lest states eventually peel off in utter frustration with a one-size-fits-all approach to policy-making to fit an empire composed of member-states.

The full essay is at "Is Healthcare a Human Right?"

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

The full essay is at "A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground." 

Corporate Governance and Political Activism: The Case of Ben & Jerry's

When a company’s management decides to take a partisan position publicly on a political issue, especially one that is contentious, decreased revenue, whether from potential or actual consumers individually who disagree with the company’s position, or from an organized boycott from groups that stand against the position. Anger may be a stronger motivator than ideological agreement, in which case any increase in purchases would be less than the lost revenue. This asymmetry itself is interesting from the standpoint of human nature, and strongly suggests that CEO’s steer their respective companies, which managements operate on behalf of the stockholders anyway, away from taking controversial positions on social or political issues that do not directly and significantly pertain to the bottom-line (i.e., profitability) in the short- or medium-term. In short, wading into societal issues is, generally speaking, not good for business. What then about a company like the ice-cream manufacturer, Ben & Jerry’s, which from its inception had social/political activism as a salient part of the company’s mission?

The full essay is at "Corporate Governance and Political Activism."

Electing a U.S. President: What Is a Landslide?

A landslide electoral victory in representative democracy is typically limited to the criterion of the extent of the vote-spread between candidates for a given office. In regard to the U.S. presidency, the Electoral College presents an alternative criterion, especially as a significant difference in votes in the College may not be reflected in the popular vote. Although that vote is by member state, the totals from all of the states are typically used to assess whether a landslide has occurred and thus whether the winning candidate has a political mandate to implement campaign promises. Whether a landslide or not, winning an election legitimates a candidate implementing the platform on which a candidate has campaigned. So whether a candidate for U.S. president has a landslide has typically been over-emphasized by American journalists, as if not having a large spread in the popular vote—even if such a spread exists in the Electoral College vote (which is the vote that really matters in the election of a U.S. president)—means that the winner has no prerogative to enact one’s agenda. I contend that even under the assumption that an electoral landslide is important, there are alternative ways of assessing whether a landslide has occurred.

The full essay is at "Electing a U.S. President."

Greedy Grocers: Exploiting Customers and Workers with Impunity

Adam Smith theorized that price competition on products and labor would allow the self-interests of the buyers and sellers to result in unintended beneficial consequences. For one thing, price gouging would not happen because, assuming low barriers to enter the market to sell, competitors would quickly drop their prices and gain market share. That grocery prices did not fall after the supply-shocks, including in shipping and hiring workers, ended with the end of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2023 is a pretty good indication that the grocery (and meat producer) industry was not competitive. Oligarchic markets—those in which just a few, often times very large, sellers exist—are devoid of the competitive mechanism that would otherwise maintain prices that are fair to buyers. That is, not only do competitive markets efficiently allocate goods and services at prices that connect supply to demand; such markets can also satisfy the ethical virtue of justice as fairness. Smith was not shy in admitted that a government willing to stand up to big companies is necessary to keep a market from slipping into the decadence of an oligopoly and especially a monopoly. I contend that both Americans and their elected representatives were blind, perhaps conveniently so given the power of large companies in American governments, both during the coronavirus pandemic, which ran from roughly 2020 to 2022, and even afterwards as Kroger and Albertsons colluded at the expense (literally) of their respective customers and workers.  

The full essay is at "Greedy Grocers."

Taoist Climate Change on Halloween

In the midst of the intensification of the very polarized and thus divisive U.S. presidential campaign “season” (i.e., year) during its last week, Halloween of 2024 occurred in Boston, Massachusetts not only without the need of trick-or-treaters and their parents to wear winter coats, but also with the option of wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts without even having to wear a light jacket. That this was so as late as 8pm was nothing short of surreal not only to New Englanders, but also to any transplants from the northern-tier Midwestern and Plains states.  It being around 70F degrees well into the dark hours was nothing short of unprecedented, and so much so that the negative impact of the cold climate in detracting from the holiday in prior years could finally be grasped. I had realized this more than a decade earlier when I was in Miami during Halloween. There is indeed a silver lining to global warming for people living in places that are cold during the late fall, winter, and early spring seasons, even as contrary to political correctness it is to admit this even to friends. The proclivity of the human mind/brain to divide up the world in terms of dichotomies of mutually-exclusive, antagonistic poles does not necessarily fit with empirically with the real world. Taoism speaks to this.

The full essay is at "Climate Change on Halloween."

On the American Media’s Hyperbole in Politics

If America can be said to have violent cultures, relatively speaking and especially in countries such as Honduras but also in some U.S. states such as Illinois (e.g., Rockford and south Chicago), the media may simply be reflecting the wider culture in writing of political debates by using words like fight and battle in place of argue and debate. One effect is to exacerbate the problem, culturally speaking. Another effect is to garner more attention, which in turn translates into more revenue from selling advertisements. To the media, the latter counts whereas the former does not; the media can blame the “heated rhetoric” of candidates for office and elected officeholders for an uptick in political violence rather than assume some of the responsibility. I submit that journalists are even more at fault when they magnify the significance of a political event to the point of being mistaken, widely missing the actual mark. The lack of any follow-through in the field wherein one media outlet holds another accountable is also a problem, especially when all of the major outlets are on the proverbial bandwagon.

The full essay is at "The American Media's Hyperbole in Politics."

Hungary and Texas: Busing Immigrants

Two years after the government of Texas in the U.S. began transferring migrants to other states and to Washington D.C., the government of Hungary announced that it too would bus migrants, but rather than transporting them to other states, the destination would be Brussels exclusively. Although the respective political strategies differ, the two policies both represent the same pressure point in federal systems. The cost of united action at the federal level on public policy is that the states are not as free as otherwise to manifest their respective ideological and cultural views in public policy at the state level. That federal policy or law is often a compromise between the preferences of the states means that political pressure exists not only between states, but between a given state and federal law. This is inherent to federalism because it provides benefits from united action and some ability of states to enact legislation reflecting their respective distinct dominant ideology. Enabling both is one of federalism’s best features, yet it comes with a cost in terms of political tension that is endemic rather than merely episodic. Simply put, no system of government is without drawbacks or downsides. The trick is perhaps in how to manage them so they don’t get so out of control that the federal system itself collapses. In 2024, Viktor Orbán, governor of the E.U. state of Hungary, was testing the limits much more than was Greg Abbott, governor of the U.S. state of Texas, even as Orbán was using Abbott’s playbook.

The full essay is at "Hungary and Texas."

Pulling the Curtain Back on President Biden’s Retirement Address

There is an expression in politics referring to how legislation is made; it is likened to the making of sausage, the public display of which is not generally desired. Furthermore, it is unrealistic and even counter-productive for the American electorate to know the intricate mechanisms by which a bill makes its way through Congress before being signed by the president to become a law. Nevertheless, the strategic and self-interested manipulation of public perception by elected representatives in order that the electorate will have an overstated positive view of its representatives, who can have more discretion and thus power with the vote of confidence, is counter to an effective democratic republic, which after all is distinct from direct democracy. I contend that the desire to falsely manipulate popular opinion went into President Biden’s address on his decision to serve only one term, as well as in the comments of high ranking members of his party in support of his decision not to run for reelection. That there might be more political capital, not to mention a better legacy, in being straight with the American people is a possibility that seems to elude American politicians.

The full essay is at "President Biden's Retirement Address."

Journalism Goes Only So Far in Empire-Scale Democracy

A news story only goes so far; only so much “digging” is possible against a pressing deadline. Moreover, we humans are not particularly good at “connecting the dots” when they are far afield. Through natural selection in an environment in which humans were prey as well as hunters, we are still “hard-wired” to privilege the immediate. So it takes more than a bit of effort to counter this natural predilection in order to make a truly informed judgment that takes into account the relevant tributaries. One such judgment concerns the impact of U.S. President Joe Biden’s age on his fitness to serve a second term.

The full essay is at "Journalism Goes Only So Far."